Tunnel Mountain Marathon
This past week was spent setting up the outdoor stage for Perfomance in the Park. This yearly event includes two days of music at Cascade Gardens, in Banff. This years artists included Joel Plaskett Emergency, Matt Anderson, Rural Alberta Advantage, and K-OS.
Setup starts with a site prep on Tuesday, and the stage is built Wednesday and Thursday. Friday morning the sound system loads in, and performances happen Friday evening, and Saturday afternoon. Then the whole thing comes down Sunday. This makes for a long week, with lots of physical work! We were lucky again this year with the weather. It rained each day during setup, but when it came to showtime the clouds cleared and the sun came out. Sundays strike was no different, with patches of rain all day (but hey it's fun working in the rain!).
Monday and Tuesday were my days off, and I had big plans again! One day for a hike, and another for a long run.
Mondays weather forcast had promised the better day, so my friend Jackson and myself planned to hike. Last November I had attempted to summit Mt. Cory near Banff, but snow covered ridges kept us from reaching the top. This mountain had been on my mind for some time, and I wanted to get to the top, and tick it off in the book.
Snowy ridge to the summit of Mt. Cory in November..We are heading down
Looking up at the summit...We didn't get much further
We had a perfect day for the hike, and made it to the summit in just under four hours. The trail was pretty steep most of the way up, but the views were simply amazing! Round trip time of seven hours, roughy 16km. Thank you Jackson Buchanan for the AMAZING photos!!! (Note: this was Jacksons first big mountain summit since arriving in Banff; We didn't make it to the top of Cascade a few weeks ago becuase of snow)
Near Treeline
Looking back at Banff
This will make for some fun Screeing on the way down (Scree Skiing)
Near the summit
Standing on the summit of Mt. Cory!
Jackson on the summit
I woke up late on Tuesday, still a little tired from the day before. I went up to work to get some mail and check my emails. I knew that I wanted to run a far distance to test my endurance, but I was not sure where to go. The weather didn't seem too stable, and the forcast called for possible rain later in the day. I decided to run close to town, so I wasn't kilometers away from home if it got stormy (Thunderstormy...I run in the rain). This is when I came up with the Tunnel Mountain Marathon!
I run up Tunnel Mountain a few times a week, and I have a few loops with varying distances. My goal for the day was to complete a Marathon distance (42.2km) with a couple summits of Tunnel. I decided on 4 laps up and down the mountain; two 12km, one 10km, and one 8km loop.
The first two laps were quite easy. Each one starting at the housing coop where I live, and then heading straight up the mountain. My focus was running straight from home, up Tunnel without stopping; a distance of 4km with 300m of elevation gain. By laps three and four my legs were screaming in pain, and I had to push hard mentally to keep from stopping. Upon rounding the last corner to the summit, I couldn't stop myself from crying. Although I have recently done more elevation gain running in one day, I hadn't been able to run Tunnel non-stop until a month and a half ago, and it felt good to do it four times (in 4 hours).
I sprinted the last kilometer home, completing my first ever Marathon distance! I then sat down, iced my legs, and smashed an entire pizza to my face :) (I usually eat pretty healthy, except on long run days!)
As I get closer to the big day, (Just over 2 weeks away) I am forever thankful for all the support and kind words of encouragement from friends and family. It is not only training and hard work that will get me through this challenge. It is everyone else who believes in me that will see me through until the end.
SO THANK YOU!
Now another long week of outdoor stage setup ensues. The stage is being setup at The Banff Centre, where it will stay for over a month. Here is what our progress looks like after the first day. Peep the live webcam here: http://www.banffcentre.ca/webcam/
